JUST three more days until the trade deadline and the Yankees don’t seem to have an asset to dangle in order to obtain a pitcher who hasn’t been designated by someone, somewhere for assignment, not even a one.

Not even the one who played an integral role as the every-day second baseman last year for the NL-champion Cardinals and who now sits on the bench every day for the Yankees.

What’s his name again?

Oh, right; Tony Womack.

In a season where pitchers have disappeared by the half-dozen, no one has been more of a disappearing act than the 35-year-old Womack, who signed a two-year, $4M free agent contract in the dead of winter and is now experiencing the chill of irrelevance during a summer heat wave.

No need for Womack, signed to provide small-ball ability and speed at the top of the order, to check the lineup card. Seventeen straight on the bench and two at-bats – presuming last night’s rain-threatened game against the Twins was played – since July 5. Two starts in a month.

A lifetime .274 hitter, a three-time NL base-stealing champion in eight years, a 2001 World Championship starting shortstop in Arizona, Womack came here a player of some prominence and has become . . . what’s that again? . . . oh, right, an afterthought.

If it is always now for the Yankees, it seems to be never for Womack.

“Tell me about it, man,” Womack sighed in the clubhouse an hour before batting practice. “What can I say? I don’t know what to say.

“I don’t really have anything to say.”

Womack stole bases in each of the Yankees’ first two games, went the next 21 without one, and then watched Robinson Cano steal his job at second the beginning of May. The Yankees moved Womack to left field in the first shakeup of this all-shook-up season – remember, an ailing Bernie Williams as the DH and Hideki Matsui to center? – and then even tried him in center himself for a handful of games before briefly deciding that even the Melky (Cabrera) Way provided a better option.

Now, though, with Williams more or less back in center and Cano ensconced at second, Womack sits. And sits some more. One would think the Yankees could use him as an asset in a trade, and indeed early last month it appeared as if San Diego and Minnesota had some interest in dealing for him, but now, not.

So Womack, albeit politely, scrunches his face and declines to respond when asked if he expects and/or wants to be a Yankee upon expiration of Sunday’s deadline.

“Tony’s not happy and it’s easy to understand why,” Joe Torre said. “But I’ve talked to him about his situation a few times recently and I know that he’s handling this professionally and that he’s not throwing in the towel on the season.”

Torre said he’d cited Dave Roberts’ contribution to the Red Sox against the Yankees in last year’s ALCS to Womack as an example of how critical he – or, perhaps more, accurately, his legs – could still be this season.

You all remember: Game 4, ninth inning, Yanks three outs away from a sweep, Mariano Rivera walks leadoff hitter Kevin Millar, for whom Roberts – obtained from the Dodgers at the deadline – pinch runs. And immediately steals second base before promptly scoring the tying run on Bill Mueller’s single to keep the Red Sox alive in a game they’d win 6-4 in 12. Scored the tying run the next night in the eighth inning, too, after entering as a pinch runner.

No at-bats in the series. Two runs scored. And a standing ovation at this year’s Fenway ring ceremony.

“Roberts changed the series . . . gave them the chance to change the series,” Torre said. “A pinch-runner made that difference.